As per the statistics up to 2013 provided by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Taiwan, cancer, also called “malignant tumor,” has been the leading cause of death for 31 years. Current clinical treatment for cancer comprises surgical incision, chemotherapy, target therapy, or radiotherapy. Among them, radiotherapy is focused on in the present invention.
Cancer radiotherapy destroys tumor cells of the associated patient by emitting radiation to the tumor cells. Unfortunately, radiation can attack the patient's healthy cells, as well as the tumor cells. To date, a certain pharmaceutical, such as nitroimidazole described in WO2011/109387, and a composition including rapamycin and substituted quinolone described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,507,495, has been found to make tumor cells sensitive to radiation. As such, the dosage of radiation may be reduced and the risk of attacking healthy cells by radiation may be diminished. As a result, the efficiency of attacking tumor cells by radiation may be improved. The pharmaceutical is particularly called “sensitizer for cancer radiotherapy,” but it usually has low biocompatibility.
Accordingly, there is a need to develop a novel pharmaceutical to be employed as a sensitizer for cancer radiotherapy, and to be expected to bring more selections for the radiotherapy.